That was my thought as I sent an email to work, requesting a special consideration for my ASD.

Just WTHAIED?

Considering I only just got the permanent job and am still on probation, it felt stupidly impulsive. And I can be impulsive, I’ll be first to admit that, but I’m pretty sure I’m not stupid. Yes, okay, I now accept that I have a developmental disorder, that I might not be quite up where I should be on a social and emotional level, but I’m not stupid. There’s always a reason.

This one dates back 5 years. Being a ‘live-in-the-present’ sort of person, I rarely think back to the past and have a terrible memory (probably atrophied from lack of use 😀 ), so I can’t recall exactly what happened. All I know is I took time off work because I’d lost the ability to cope, I was burnt out. And what I do remember was not understanding how that could have happened, because I actually enjoyed my job, I liked my colleagues, and I wasn’t under a particularly heavy workload – it just made no sense whatsoever.

Now, after reading about others’ experiences with autistic burn-out, the picture is clear. This is what happens to those of us who remain undiagnosed by mid-life, the ones with mild traits, who’ve learnt to mask their difficulties and live a normal life. Normal activities for others can be uncomfortable for us, they create a little extra stress. Over time, it builds up. Maybe I’d just been juggling too many projects, going to a few too many client meetings, maybe I’d lost my head altogether and attempted to engage in verbal negotiations. Repressed autism demands payback.

Well, now I have another job, and I’m enjoying it even more than the last. The work is right up my street and my colleagues are great. I felt comfortable enough to disclose my ASD to my line manager and his reaction was just like my parents, a non-plussed: ‘but there’s nothing really wrong with you, is there?’ Which is good, because that’s where I want to be at, and how I want to be perceived.

Except…

Sitting there at the back of my mind is fear. Not fear of how I might be perceived, it’s greater than that. It’s fear of losing it all – the job, the colleagues, my self-esteem, everything, through another burn-out. I’m willing to do just about anything to avoid that.

So what can I do? I figured the only way is to increase self-awareness of my limitations and do my best to stay within them. I need to recognise the situations that cause me stress and instead of just “sucking it up” as I would have in the past, I need to learn how to avoid them. I have to stop pretending I can do the same as everyone else without consequences. Basically, I have to loosen up my self-control and allow myself to be more autistic.

So that’s why, when something at work was bothering me, when I was put in a situation which I felt I should have been able to handle – which anybody else would have been able to handle – but which was actually stressing me out, I gave in. Well, I tried making it a suggestion. Then I tried outright asking for what I wanted. And when nobody was getting it – because how could they? It wasn’t a problem for anyone else – I sent an email essentially saying, ‘I’m on the spectrum, this is an issue for me, and I need your support’.

It felt bad, having to do that. ‘Uncomfortable’ doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling, the uncertainty and vulnerability. The trouble is, I know how bizarre this must seem to others, that someone who seems to be normal and capable might suddenly start claiming to be autistic and in need of special treatment. Too weird, right? It wouldn’t surprise me if they start thinking me to be – I don’t know – self-serving? Attention-seeking? Mentally unstable?

But this is what it is to have ASD, isn’t it? Being Asperger is to be chronically misunderstood. We do things that are perceived as odd and defy expectations. What people don’t understand is that, just because we have trouble expressing why we do what we do, just because it makes no sense in their eyes, doesn’t mean there’s no reason.

I’m reading the last in a series of fantasy books by N.K.Jemisin, The Broken Earth Trilogy.

This series is good, very good.

And the strange thing is, the story is really too dark for me. It’s basically the end of the world; life is hard, and people die. Babies die. Yet I’m drawn to keep reading. I finish one book and want to go right back and read it all over again.

It’s all down to the writing.

I don’t just mean that a lot of this is written in second person, although that’s part of it – and quite a feat to pull off in itself. And it certainly helps that there’s some great world-building as well – the idea of earth-shifting magic particularly appealed to me. Above these, though, the thing that makes me want to read over again is the way the story is structured.

What N.K. has done is hard to describe – and demonstrates so much more mastery of story-telling than I’ve attained that I’m not entirely sure I understand it. If anyone else has read these books, I’d be interested to hear your opinion on what she’s done.

It’s something to do with withholding information, a key part of the main character’s story. Then bringing plot threads together in such a way as to reveal everything at the end – and also hint at a wider plot. Each book has its own major reveal – enough to satisfactorily conclude that stage of the story – yet the overall picture remains elusive until the end of the series.

It’s something to do with non-linearity – following individual story threads in the present and the past, until the combination creates a picture that is wider than the story of each character alone, that encompasses world-changing events. Then drawing these threads together into a satisfying conclusion.

As a writer, I know this is hard to do, incredibly hard. It takes great skill and confidence to be able to hook readers into a story in which nothing has yet been explained. Yet this is what N.K. Jemisin does, seemingly with ease.

So, it’s been a while. I’ve been a bit distracted over the last 3 months or so, getting my head around the concept of being on the autism spectrum. Not because that’s changed anything about who I am, but because it’s forced me to confront a few uncomfortable truths about myself, which had never before been at the forefront of my mind.

Right now, I really want to stop thinking about it, to ‘get over it’ and get back to more productive pursuits (like writing, yay! – Thanks, Alison, for reminding me how much I enjoy even talking about writing). But I’m feeling like I need one more post on the topic of ASD. Maybe just to set down some of what I’ve learnt, and to get things clear in my head, so I can move on. So here are my thoughts. Oh, and this is going to be a long one, I’m afraid… and mightily self-absorbed. More like an essay than a blog post (you have been warned).

So, first off, how did this happen? How can someone go their whole life without realising they’re on the autism spectrum?

I think it’s because, in the past, I had little self-awareness of the sort that lets you see yourself as others see you. In my teens, I was pretty much oblivious to my own social ineptitude, chalking my mistakes up to immaturity. In my twenties, I read about the concept of emotional intelligence, EQ, and realised I had a deficit, but still thought I was capable of change. In my thirties I was having babies and emigrating and was too busy to think about anything much.

It took me forty-odd years to get to the point of realising that, not only was I failing to behave towards others the way I thought I ought, the way everyone else did, but there were limits to how much I could change that, however much effort I put in or however many years’ experience I gained. Maybe I needed those decades of trying to be like everyone else and not quite succeeding to recognise that if I hadn’t outgrown my limitations by then, I probably never would.

So that’s how I came to the realisation that there was a hard-wired difference in my brain. When Aspergers ticked a lot of boxes, that led me to seek a diagnosis. But to have it confirmed, well, the effect on my psyche was unexpected. And, well, kind of brutal.

I guess I thought it would be a relief to know – and yes, it was. For a while. Until I started reading about ASD and consciously noticing my own behaviour. Like noticing how truly inept I am at explaining myself verbally (or, horror of horrors, over the phone). Like at the Spec Fic group, when we’re given a writing prompt, noticing how others can write a story off the top of their heads and I… well, I just can’t. And realising that the reason I clash with my Director at work is because he has a top-down thinking style (decide on a solution and design towards it), whereas mine is an autistic bottom-up (gather data, analyse, and see which solution pops up). And however much I ought to know the importance of not disrespecting one’s boss, I can’t bring myself to see his way as right. And, worst of all, I can’t stop myself from telling him so.

Is there anything I can do about any of the above? No, not really. This is what makes it autism and not just learned character traits – these behaviours are basically out of my control.

So… yeah. I think I’ve discovered autistic frustration, too.

On the other hand, the more I learn about ASD, the luckier I feel. It’s such a wide spectrum in terms of the severity of traits, whether mind-blindness or executive dysfunction or hypersensitivity, and factoring in co-morbidities, in all respects I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Aspergers is so much easier to deal with than classic autism, and with a decent IQ and no learning difficulties or sensory sensitivities to speak of, I’ve had it remarkably easy.

Even amongst those at the mild end, it’s sobering how much a minor brain difference can potentially affect their lives. There are some shocking statistics out there about levels of anxiety and depression amongst those on the spectrum. And long-term unemployment rates are horrendous. They’re so really, truly, awful, that I’m furious at the injustice of it, with a passion I haven’t felt about anything since I was an undergrad.

Seeing how much easier my life has been compared to others on the spectrum, sometimes I wonder if I haven’t got it all wrong, that maybe what I’ve got is not the same thing at all. But then I start interacting with the people in my life and I start noticing my own thought-patterns and behaviours (because once you start it’s hard to stop), and, yep, it’s clearly the same thing. How it affects people, though, is… well, it’s complicated.

I’ve been reading a bit about ASD and there’s a particular book that really made an impact on me. It’s called “Autism and Asperger Syndrome in Adults” by Dr Luke Beardon, and in it is presented a simple principle:

Autism + Environment = Outcome

In other words, the inherent severity of autistic traits is only part of the picture.

Summarising the concept in my own words, if one accepts that autistic people think and experience the world differently to neurotypicals, and that most social environments have been set up by and for neurotypicals, it’s hardly surprising that an autistic person might feel out of their element and suffer stress and anxiety.

In the sphere of work, for example, there might be a role that would be perfectly suited to an autistic person’s talents. But with recruitment practices relying on networking and multiple interviews, with HR staff acting as corporate gatekeepers, and with the modern emphasis on communication skills, flexibility, and teamwork, that person is unlikely even to get through the door.

But I’m digressing. As angry as I feel at the employment situation for those on the spectrum, what I was trying to say is more general, related to the environmental factor. The reason I’ve had things so easy, I believe, is not only the mildness of my traits but also having been brought up in a favourable environment.

My parents had a lot to do with that. Looking back, they were amazingly tolerant – I never, ever, felt that they were disappointed in me, or they might have wished for a daughter with a more conventional personality. As a child, I felt loved unconditionally. With all the self-esteem issues that go along with ASD, that has to be the greatest of gifts. Somehow, the way my parents brought me up has given me a deep sense of security and a belief in the inherent goodness of other people.

Later, when I started out at work, my colleagues were also remarkably tolerant. In hindsight, engineering was a good choice. I was working with smart, well-educated people, who were secure enough in their own worth not to engage in bullying or passive-aggressive behaviours. If you can forgive a (slightly sexist) over-generalisation, the fact that most of my colleagues were male may have contributed to an environment that was less attuned to social mis-steps. These were guys who understood the value of cutting out the gossip and getting on with the job.

Because of my parents’ acceptance of a quirky daughter, I survived to adulthood without major issues. Because of colleagues’ acceptance, I’ve maintained employment for most of my life. And because of my husband’s (somewhat begrudging) acceptance, I get a certain amount of leniency with my behaviour at home.

I like to think this goes both ways, and an accepting environment for me has benefits for others. It gives me space to do what I do, to use my talents. At work, apparently my ability to focus exclusively on a task for hours on end is an autistic trait, too, but of the good variety. There are odd little things I seem to find easier than others, like looking at a roadside slope and sketching it more-or-less to scale, like picking out landslide hazards faster. And in writing groups, does ASD have something to do with my ‘feel’ for stories – my quick grasp of plot patterns, and keen eye for errors? Probably.

So, when it comes down to it, I’m not complaining.

I guess what I’m saying is all about the importance of acceptance. While I know I’ve been incredibly fortunate in having ASD in its mildest form, and having the intelligence to adapt to it, that’s not the whole story behind my relative success in life. And while I know life is incredibly tough for those facing the challenge of the more severe forms of autism, I’m inclined to believe this principle holds for them, too. That is, that everyone has the potential to develop skills that are useful to society. To give those skills space to grow means creating environments that in which the person’s worth is recognised and respected, they are loved unconditionally, and above all, accepted.

Reading ‘The Shadow of his Hand’ was an unexpected pleasure – it’s rare to find a first novel that can pull me into the story so capably.

In this epic fantasy, the Jerikan armies are camped on the border of the allied kingdoms and war seems inevitable. When a baby is born with a prophesied mark, the young King Eldilin dares not defy the Unseen God but must send his sister and the babe on a dangerous quest.

Fredrick is a directionless young man who enlisted as a soldier because it “seemed like the right thing to do”. With his uncanny ability to calm the screaming child, he’s an unlikely and reluctant addition to Princess Kathryn’s company. Can they beat the odds and complete the prophecy?

For the genre, I thought the plot proceeded at a fast pace, with never a dull moment, and the world-building was quietly effective (if hazy on the geographical details). The stand-out for me, though, was the characters. There was something appealing in Fredrick’s assessment of himself as an ordinary man out of his depth, and honesty and humour in the way he coped as fate stretched him to his limits and beyond.

Shifts of point of view from the main protagonists to other plot threads were also effectively managed, maintaining my attention. In particular, I became quite absorbed in the secondary plot revolving around the King and his unexpected bride, a meeting of singularly unusual personalities.

Overall, this was a diverting read. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment, though less to see how the war will proceed than to be involved in the developing relationships between the characters.

This post is going to branch off a bit from my usual topics of writing, book reviews and so on, and into a personal concern. This is more to get things off my chest than anything else, so basically I’m writing it entirely for my own benefit, but I guess it might be somewhat enlightening for people who know me.

Diving straight in at the deep end, what’s been on my mind a lot recently is that I’ve come to believe (or very strongly suspect) I’m on the autism spectrum. Or more specifically, that I have what used to be known as Asperger’s Syndrome.

Obviously if I do, it’s pretty mild, considering I’ve got to this stage in my life before realising what the issue was. And when I mention this suspicion to people, and my desire to get a formal diagnosis, the general consensus is: “it’s just your personality, Kay” and “does a diagnosis matter”?

I can see their point, and yet I feel that a diagnosis does matter, it matters a lot. The difficulty I’ve been having is in explaining why, even to myself.

So I’m going to have a crack at it. Let me put it like this:

Imagine, hypothetically, that you’ve always had difficulty getting up in the morning.

It’s a common problem, right?

So what do you do? You might be careful about what time you go to bed and how much sleep you get. You might set alarms on your watch and your phone and your clock/radio. Thanks to these, you manage to drag yourself out of bed and get to work on time.

The trouble is, every day you feel tired, so very tired. You wonder how on earth everyone else manages to look so bright-eyed and alert. You wonder why it is that you collapse in exhaustion when you get home and other people still have the energy to go out. It doesn’t make sense.

Eventually, you start getting the picture. You’ve tried everything you can think of to stick to the same schedule as everyone else, to fit in with other people’s timetables, and still you struggle. So maybe this is just the way you are, the way you’ll always be. You just have to work around it.

So you ask your boss to let you start later in the day, making up some excuse about needing to take your kids to school. Because how can you tell him that you simply can’t get out of bed in the morning?

You ask your husband to take over evening chores, so that you can concentrate on your supposed “health routine”. Because how can you tell him you’re just too tired, even though he works longer hours than you?

And all the time you feel guilty and inadequate that you struggle to cope with such a simple thing as getting up in the morning, which everyone else takes in their stride. And you worry over how many allowances your boss and your husband are willing to make.

Then you discover there’s a recognised disorder called “sleeping-late syndrome”, which fits your situation perfectly, which explains everything.

Would you seek a diagnosis?

Okay, so obviously, autism spectrum has nothing to do with sleeping late (I just enjoy thinking in metaphor). But the fact is that the issues that affect people with mild autism are, to a certain extent, issues that everyone has to deal with. So an autistic person has difficulties with social interactions, but doesn’t everybody, sometimes? So we’re bad at remembering names and faces. That’s not so unusual. So we might get overwhelmed in noisy, crowded places, but why not just avoid them? On the face of it, these issues don’t seem like a big deal. And therein lies so much misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, these seemingly minor issues can actually have major consequences. Because what you don’t see is the amount of effort even a mildly autistic person is putting in, every day, to function in society at a level which would be considered ‘normal’. There’s constant pressure to perform in a way that goes against their nature, just to fit in.

And what you may not be aware of is that every day a person with Aspergers walks the edge of a precipice. It only takes one inappropriate comment in an important meeting to lose that job. It might only take one ill-judged remark to wreck a friendship, or one serious meltdown to destroy a marriage. It’s all too easy for an autistic person to find themselves both jobless and socially isolated.

A presentation I saw on youtube by Michelle Vines (author of ‘Asperger’s on the inside’) made a lot of sense. She said that autism is a classic case of the square peg in the round hole. This rang a bell with me, because I feel as though I’ve spent much of my adult life being that square peg and trying to hammer myself into that round hole.

A few years ago, after coming way too close to a breakdown, I finally recognised how much stress being ‘normal’ was causing me. I threw away the hammer. No more forcing myself into situations that made me uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work well at all, because when you’re married with kids, you have responsibilities which mean that retreating into one’s autistic comfort zone is simply not an option.

Basically, I was stuck, halfway in and halfway out of that stupid hole, unable to hammer myself further without breaking, and unable to retreat.

Realising I’m (probably) on the autism spectrum has been a relief. Now I understand that however hard I try, my autistic brain is never going to be completely compatible with ‘normal’ expectations, I’m in a better position to accept my hard-wired limitations.

While I have no intention of using ASD as an excuse for the worst of my behaviour (and I hope people will give me a kick up the backside if I try), maybe I can ease up on the feelings of guilt and inadequacy when I do get things wrong.

Which is not to say this awkward peg can never get through that hole. Here’s how I imagine having a diagnosis would help:

It would allow me access to the Asperger community. Already, from reading about the way others on the spectrum deal with the same issues I have, I can see positive changes I can make in my life – and this time they’re changes that work with autistic traits and ways of thinking, rather than against them.

It’s belatedly occurred to me that sometimes I ought to ask for help. When I do so, if I have a diagnosis, I’ll finally have a way to explain the true nature of the issue, without being met with a dismissive “doesn’t everybody feel like that sometimes?”

Hopefully, I might get help that works for me, rather than being presented with solutions based on neurotypical expectations. And if that means sometimes asking society to adjust to my needs, instead of the other way around, so be it.

Maybe, by getting a formal diagnosis, I’ll be able to swap that hammer for a chisel, and start reshaping that round hole into a square.

(Of course, I might not get a diagnosis at all, but that’s another topic for another day…)

Just a short post this time, because I’ve been busy writing. Inspiration struck and I’m two chapters into a new novella and revelling in that wonderful ‘first draft feeling’ (a little like stepping onto the moon), even if I was supposed to be working on my rewrite of The Sapience Assessment.

Something that’s not so great is the news that another writers’ website is shutting down. I was gutted when my go-to site Authonomy vanished just over a year ago, but decamped over to Writeon, an Amazon version which I assumed would be sticking around. The idea of these sites is that you can post chapters of your work for people to comment on, so it’s a useful way to get feedback. The problem is that they’re set up by publishers hoping to spot new talent, but because they’re sites serving writers they’re just not accessed by the quantity of readers needed to do the publisher’s work for them as intended and weed out the good stories from the bad.

So now Writeon is also going the way of the dodo, it seemed like I had two main options. One was to post my work on Wattpad. This is much more of a site for readers, so in theory it should be possible to get your work out to a bigger audience, maybe start developing a pre-publication fan-base. On the other hand, the comments tend to be one-liners, not particularly useful as feedback, and I’ve heard there’ve been serious issues with people’s work being copied.

What I’ve done instead is started posting my work on Scribophile. This is not set up for readers but neither is it a ruse by publishers to get their job done for free. What I like about Scribophile is that it’s not intended specifically to spot talent so there’s no sense of competition and works are not rated. No back-scratching or back-stabbing to get to the top. The basis of the site is that you critique others’ work, gaining you karma points, which you the spend to post your own work up for critique. It can be a bit hit-and-miss whether you’re going to get a good critiquer or a bad one, but (shrug) you’re guaranteed three critiques of each posted piece and the basic level of membership is free. All it takes is a little time and effort.

I’d be interested to hear which websites, or other means, people use to get feedback on their writing. And how much feedback is enough? After how many people have looked at your manuscript do you say: yes, that’s good to go?

It took me a while to decide on the topic for this blog. I was thinking I’d write something about my novels and what they’re all about, but I wasn’t sure where to start. I briefly toyed with the idea of commenting on the US presidential election along with half the world. Yesterday, though, I had a chance encounter with the over-used phrase “strong female character”, wondered why it irritated me, and in thinking about it realised these topics are all bound up together. Forgive me if this is a long post, but here’s how:

Let’s start with “strong female characters”. What irks me about these are two-fold: first that the phrase is often used for those stereotypical “badass” women, who make certain they get what they want by whatever means.

In the words of Carina Chocano in New York Times Magazine, they are “tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone.” They “tolerate very little blubbering, dithering, neuroticism, anxiety, melancholy or any other character flaw or weakness that makes a character unpredictable and human.”

In other words, they’re driven and strongly individualistic, with little regard or lost sleep on behalf of those around them. Which is not a problem in itself, there’s definitely a place for such characters, and they can make for some fun reading. It just bugs me how misleading it is to term these women “strong” and applaud them for it, when in real life, strength, as in “strength of character” is so much more than being kick-ass.

With a bit of googling, I found I wasn’t alone. Here’s something written by Sophia McDougall in the New Statesman:

“What happens when one tries to fit iconic male heroes into an imaginary “Strong Male Character” box? A few fit reasonably well, but many look cramped and bewildered in there. They’re not used to this kind of confinement, poor things. They’re used to being interesting across more than one axis and in more than two dimensions.

Is Sherlock Holmes strong? It’s not just that the answer is “of course”, it’s that it’s the wrong question. A better question would be – “What is Sherlock Holmes like?”

I want a wealth of complex female protagonists who can be either strong or weak or both or neither, because they are more than strength or weakness… I want her to be strong in a way that isn’t about physical dominance or power.”

I find that characters who are not of the alpha female type inevitably are dismissed with a label of weak. It’s as though the definition of weakness is as broad as that of strength is narrow, so that characters who are far more emotionally nuanced must be compared unfavourably.

Just take the backlash against the 2015 film Cinderella. In this version, her mother’s dying wish is that she “have courage and show kindness”. But it seems in modern society, these traits are no longer considered admirable. Cinderella was seen as passive, if not pathetic, for not standing up for herself more, or just leaving, but to me she shows remarkable strength. For a discussion which explains my feelings on this far better than I could, I quote from this site:

“The idea that anyone with sense and self-respect would fight back is insidious, and it does not match up with reality, not even in a modern, non-fairy tale setting. Cinderella is initially a victim of micro-aggressions, each of which seems perfectly justifiable in the moment. The abuse escalates gradually, until it becomes a norm that Cinderella feels that she cannot escape.

That is the reality of abusers using a victim’s own kindness against them. Cinderella’s great strength is not just that she stands up to her stepmother in the end. It’s also that she retains her own kindness, remains true to her personality — she doesn’t have to become someone she’s not to escape”.

The way I see it, Cinderella is not passive, she is not accepting the situation she finds herself in. What she is trying to do is find a way out that does minimal harm, not just to herself but to those around her. She is showing enormous courage.

It’s the type of courage displayed by leaders who follow codes of non-violence – think Gandhi or Martin Luther King. These people are respected for having the courage of their convictions and for their understanding of the common humanity of all people. Nobody would call them weak or passive, they had a different kind of strength.

The thing that worries me is what society we are living in now that can place so much emphasis on the sort of strength which is characterised by a lack of compassion or empathy. And before you accuse me of sounding like an old maid, harking back to the mythical golden times of my youth, there’ve been studies done on this. Apparently, in America at least, levels of self-reported empathy have plummeted.

“According to a comprehensive study from the University of Michigan, we care about others 40 percent less than people in the 1980s did, with the biggest drop-off in empathy occurring after the year 2000.

But also, researchers suggest, the expectations of modern society have changed—and not necessarily for the better for college students. Competitiveness and a must-succeed-at-all-costs philosophy is far more prevalent than in previous generations… Feeling empathy for others takes time and effort, which could be better spent, at least in the minds of young people, on achieving their own goals”.

Apparently, we’re living in an age of narcissism, the defining features of which are: an inflated sense of self-importance, and little or no ability to empathize with other people. And I’m sure you’ve heard about the skewed proportion of people in upper levels of management, the corporate CEOs, who have sociopathic traits. What does this mean for society?

“Here’s a sobering thought for the idealists among us: Even if we someday achieve a truly fair and just society, that society will nevertheless be inhabited by the same species that produced the Holocaust.

…the country’s political dynamics—the interactions between candidates, the policy proposals being considered, and even the conduct of ordinary citizens—increasingly reflect a complete lack of human empathy, a view toward others that is willfully insensitive, if not outright contemptuous.

…voters are getting the political discourse that reflects their own mindset: angry, fearful, incapable of complex analysis, and hostile toward others.”

I think you can see where Donald Trump fits into this blog, so let’s not re-tread that muddy ground, I’ll leave the politics there.

What you may be wondering is how all this relates to my novels and the answer is: it is key. At the core of my Transhumanity series is an exploration of loss of empathy. In fact, the title of the last book in the series is just that: The Empathy Key.

My protagonist is a young woman who, over the course of the series, becomes increasingly cyborg. By the last book, she is barely recognisable as human, and this has affected her not just physically but in how she relates to other people.

In one scene, Mac tries to explain to his daughter:

“Would you ever kill a flutterbug?” he asked.

“Of course not.” Flutterbugs were delicate flying creatures the length of a hand, with iridescent wings.

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t seem the same. Because I’m not touching it myself, I feel more distant, as though it was the car that killed it and nothing to do with me. I think that’s what life’s like for Thea. Her cybernetics are like the aircar, buffering her from the world. She becomes detached from other people. It was hard for her because she knew she ought to still care about the flutterbugs, but she didn’t, not really.”

What I’ve created, you might say, is the ultimate stereotypical strong female character. Physically, she’s almost indestructible. In her powerful cyborg form, she becomes a force for justice, but in a sense she has become something evil, a sociopathic killer.

The remains of her organic body cannot stay attached to the cybernetics all the time. Sometimes she has to disconnect and then she is disabled, very disabled, and physically helpless. This dichotomy of physical strength and vulnerability could be seen in terms of levels of power and agency and how they affect our relationships with others.

The big question is not only whether she can save the world, but whether she can recover her humanity. Of the two battles, it is the second that takes real strength of character, the reclaiming of her own humanity with all the flaws and “weaknesses” that implies.

When it comes down to it, the cyoborg’s physical strength and disconnect from the concerns of others is, in fact, a flaw. Her true strength of character lies in her recognition of that, and in her determination to regain a sense of compassion.